The Charlottesville Woolen
Mills: Working Life, Wartime, and the Walkout of 1918[1]

By
Andrew H. Myers

That
winter of 1917-1918 was a dark and frightened time. . . .We learned then that war was not a
quick heroic charge but a slow, incredibly complicated matter.Our spirits sank in those winter
months.We lost the flare of
excitement and we had not yet put on the doggedness of a long war

. . . .We remember World War I as a quick
victory. . . .How quickly we
forget that in that winter Ludendorff could not be beaten and that many people
were preparing in their minds and spirits for a lost war.

(John Steinbeck, East
of Eden)

Monticello
must have cast a bleak shadow over the Charlottesville Woolen Mills on the
morning of 5 February 1918.This
small factory sat a mile or two east of town where Market Street and a
Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad line descended to the confluence of Moore's
Creek and the Rivanna River.There, a four-story brick building perched on the sandy bank next to the
trestle, its Victorian bell tower rising only yards away from the track.Rather than a bell, though, a steam
whistle announced the work day's beginning.[2]Its shrill sound carried crisply
through the icy air, across the pasture on the creek's other side, and up the
wooded slopes to Jefferson's famous home.

On
this morning, the company experienced its first labor disturbance since opening
in 1867.Eighteen workers walked
out of the plant after the general manager refused to compensate them for wages
lost during a shutdown.This
number comprised a relatively small percentage of the 130 or so employees, but
the loss of skilled, experienced, hands struck a serious blow to management.Moreover, given the closely-interwoven
nature of the Woolen Mills community, the unrest had great potential to
spread.News of the incident made
the front page of the local Daily Progress.So, too, did an advertisement for
replacements.[3]

Although
the walkout was short-lived, it marks a significant turning point in the company's
century-long history, and it raises several intriguing questions.First, why did so many of the workers
at the Charlottesville mill remain loyal to management?Manufacturers elsewhere in the South
and throughout the United States experienced not just walkouts or strikes, but
extremely high turnover rates in general during the First World War.The sellers’ market for labor forced
them to boost pay sharply to keep employees from leaving.Some workers moved anyhow to find less
arduous, higher-paying jobs.Others took advantage of the favorable labor market to form unions or
exact concessions from management.Labor Department studies cite figures of 126 percent annual average
turnover for textiles and 201 percent for American industry overall during the
year 1917-1918.[4]The situation alarmed America's
industrial leaders and spawned numerous discussions in trade journals and among
economists of the time.

Nothing
of this sort happened in Charlottesville.Turnover at the Woolen Mills was 21 percent, and the highest ever
recorded there for this era only reached 29 percent in 1921.[5]Daily wages at the plant meanwhile had
only risen 23 percent between 1913 and the end of 1917.[6]
This increase, which included a bonus, had failed to keep pace with the 47
percent and 34 percent jumps in the prices of food and coal respectively.[7]Moreover, woolen mills elsewhere in
Virginia offered higher pay as did other manufacturing industries in
Charlottesville.Hence the second,
third, and fourth questions:Why
did the finishers not protest earlier?Why did they walk out when they did?And why did the rest of the plant not follow?

The
answers highlight some important themes and trends in southern labor
history.The field has seen a
division between studies that rely primarily on oral interviews--such as Allen
Tullos's Habits of Industry--and ones
that draw mainly upon manuscript census data and company records–such as
Doug Flamming's Creating the Modern South.The central questions
remain constant:Why did southern
manufacturers go to such great lengths to provide housing, schools, and other
amenities to employees?Were they
munificent patriarchs or profit maximizers?And why did southern textile workers, the lowest paid of
American industrial workers, not join unions or protest more for higher
wages?Did the benefits lull them
into complacency?[8]

Tullos
uses personal testimonies to argue that a yeoman paternalism based on the
Protestant work ethic pervaded southern society at all levels from management
to labor.This ideology compelled
factory owners to provide for their employees just as it compelled the latter
to be obedient.Some historians
have compared this relationship to that of a master and slave, but Tullos
traces mill paternalism instead to the Scotch-Irish and German pioneers who
first settled the Piedmont.Given
the relative homogeneity of southern white culture, this brand of paternalism,
he argues, is both historically continuous and regionally distinctive.

Flamming
disagrees strongly.In his case
study of a Georgia cotton mill, he uses statistics to prove that paternalism
arose out of rational choices on the part of both management and workers.Mill village paternalism to him was
part of modernization, not a throwback to the past.He subdivides paternalism into "personalism" and
"welfare capitalism."In
the former, a patron maintains control by dispensing favors based on individual
decisions or whims.In the latter,
the patron achieves control by comprehensive policies and services such as
pensions and schools.Flamming
portrays cotton mill owners as welfare capitalists who had more in common with
modern industrialists of the North than they did with southerners of the past.

Not
only does he clash with Tullos about historical continuity, he rejects
overarching cultural explanations.Flamming backs up his arguments with exhaustive research and explicit
economic data taken from census and company records.No less persuasively, Tullos relies on oral histories
scattered over time and space.[9]

An
investigation of the circumstances at the Charlottesville Woolen Mills leading
up to the crisis in 1918 offers an opportunity to combine Flamming's methods
with Tullos's arguments.Only a
few fragments of oral history remain of the Woolen Mills, but there exist
extensive company records, including payrolls, as well as manuscript census
data.Additionally, and more
importantly, the minutes of the Woolen Mills Sunday School shed light on both
the religious activities of a majority of workers and their relationships with
their fellow workers and with management.[10]

These
documents give vivid witness to the complex, steadily-evolving nature of
industrial paternalism.Management
and employees in Charlottesville continually negotiated and renegotiated a social
organization of labor based on mutual economic interests and embedded in the
prevailing ethos of Protestant Christianity.Workers balanced ambition and material gain with a need to
preserve kinship ties and maintain a sense of place in the world.Managers, as individuals who had
families, grappled with those same issues.Simultaneously, as business leaders, they attempted to
maximize profits by creating a stable work force which would produce
high-quality goods at the lowest possible cost.The result was a system of labor that made efficient use of
the dominant culture while steadily evolving in response to individual needs
and the rapidly industrializing southern economy.

The
shifting labor market within the Virginia woolen industry makes visible certain
aspects of the social organization of labor in southern textile manufacturing
that are less apparent in the South's booming cotton industry.Furthermore, the unusual combination of
events at the Charlottesville Woolen Mills during the First World War places
these larger issues in a revealing light.Unlike many woolen or cotton mills in Virginia, laborers in
Charlottesville received wages under the state average and experienced a
relatively low turnover rate during a period of high turnover and upward wage
pressure.

Clearly,
money did not keep the Charlottesville workers from leaving.Nor did management.Leadership of the mill changed hands
three times during that decade and, if anything, contributed to overall
instability.Mill foremen, or
"overseers," provided steady guidance throughout a critical
period.They served both as
supervisors on the shop floor and leaders in the mill community.Nowhere does this dual role appear more
clearly than in the Woolen Mills Sunday School.Within this milieu foremen were able to merge the spiritual
imperatives of Protestant religion with economic self-interest.The story of this school and its role
in the mill community and the 1918 walkout begins eight years earlier with the
death of mill patriarch Henry Marchant.

*
* * * *

Henry
Clay Marchant died on 10 October 1910.Although he was over seventy years old, the suddenness of his passing
shocked a mill community long accustomed to his leadership.Following a long-established custom,
the Sunday School congregation at Marchant's death elected a committee to
compose a eulogy for public reading and inclusion in the minutes book.One of the three was Henry Gustavus
Bragg, at that time the school secretary and foreman of the weaving department.[11]

Marchant
had figured prominently throughout most of Bragg's life.Bragg was born in 1867, the same year
that Marchant had incorporated the Charlottesville Woolen Mills and rebuilt the
plant from the ashes of the Civil War.His mother, Lucy Bragg, a young widow, opened a boarding house near the
mill sometime during the l870's.She rented the place from the company.There, she tended her five children along with five boarders
using the help of a young black servant woman named Anna Henderson.[12]

The
work force during the early days of the mill was a mixture of families or young
single men and women from the surrounding countryside.The Bragg household combined both of
these sources of mill labor under one roof.Lucy sent three of her children to the factory along with
the boarders.She worked regularly
there herself, too.[13]According to the 1880 Census, Henry
Bragg had already begun working by the age of 12.Although many mills during the late nineteenth century used
child labor, the one in Charlottesville did not do so then or later.Henry Bragg appears to be an exception.

Like
all the workers, young Bragg learned his job through experience, probably with
help from his mother and two older sisters.There were also old-timers there to teach him, men like
Jonas M. Stark, who had made woolen cloth during the 1850's and 1860's at the
previous plant located on the same site.Union soldiers had accidentally burned that building in 1865 while
attempting to destroy the railroad.Although the Yankee invaders could plunder and burn, they could not,
short of murder, eradicate the workers' accumulated expertise in woolen
manufacture.No doubt such
experience and training contributed to the high quality, varied selection of woolens
that the companyhad already begun
to produce by 1880.In fact,
fabric woven in Charlottesville was chosen as the standard grade cloth for
uniforms for guards at the 1893 World's Fair and for the United States Post
Office.[14]

Young
Bragg acquired more than just technical skills from being in the employ of
Henry Marchant; he learned the value of hard work and religious devotion.Young Marchant had left Charlottesville
in 1856 at the age of seventeen to work as a grocer's clerk in Petersburg.In 1860, he had joined the Twelfth
Virginia Volunteer Infantry to fight in the Civil War.He returned to Charlottesville after a
minie bullet shattered his leg at the Seven Days Battle in 1862.Marchant’s father, John Adams Marchant,
had bought the mill in 1852.While
the bone was healing, Marchant bought the mill from his father just before it
burned.[15]

That
setback did not stop him.With the
support of local stock subscribers and credit from the Furbush and Gage
machinery manufacturers of Philadelphia, he resurrected the mill in 1867.What Marchant lacked in knowledge of
textiles, he more than compensated for with his business acumen.His close brush with death during the
war perhaps strengthened his religious convictions.He belonged to the Episcopal Church, and throughout his
life, he adhered to the Protestant work ethic and a strict moral code.He demanded the same of his workers.

"The
property of a manufacturing Company must ultimately rest on the efficiency and
fidelity of its labor," Marchant wrote in an 1881 report."It must be promoted by whatever
promotes their self respect, elevates their character, and cultivates local
attachments and the home feeling."[16]In 1906, he gave the following advice
to an interviewer:"Work,
work, strive to excel.If an
employee, strive to faithfully and conscientiously discharge whatever duties
you undertake, and make your services indispensable; and, above all, ask God's
guidance and help, that you may live a sober, unselfish, righteous, and useful
life."[17]

Henry
Bragg could not have helped but absorb some of these sentiments.After all, Marchant was himself a
trinity of sorts, holding within one person the powerful positions of company
president, general manager, and superintendent.Furthermore, he and his family lived nearby, next to the
factory amidst the village that in 1880 totalled about sixty workers and had
grown to 115 by 1892.[18]By 1910 the labor force stood at almost
one hundred and thirty.Bragg
paralleled that growth through development of his personal character and skill
as a textile maker.By the time of
Marchant's death, he had become a leader within the Woolen Mills community and
foreman of the most important department in the plant, the weaving section.

*
* * * *

The
process of turning sheep's wool into cloth started long before it reached Henry
Bragg, of course.At an integrated
plant like Charlottesville, it began in the sorting room.Raw wool arrived in the form of
fleeces, which had been sheared from the sheep in one large piece.The sorting room was located in a
building adjacent to the main four-story factory.[19]In it, sorters first cut the fleeces
apart and separated the raw wool by quality.A single fleece could contain up to fourteen different
grades of wool, so this sorting required a keen eye and long experience.Microbes in the dusty wool before it
was picked and sorted posed the danger of anthrax, an illness common to
sorters.Because of the chance of
disease and the skill required for this job, workers earned relatively high wages,
one to two dollars a day.[20]

Egbert
J. Harlow supervised the sorting room.As all Charlottesville foremen in 1910, he earned $3.10 a day.Marchant made best use of Harlow's
trained eye by sending him frequently on trips to purchase wool.Whenever Harlow left, his assistant
Silas F. Walton took charge.As
"second hand," Walton earned $2 a day.The lowest paid workers were teenagers James Hollows and
Willie Desper, who earned $1.Most
likely these two were learning the job while performing the simpler tasks of
feeding sorted wool into the burr-picker machine and washer.

After
leaving the washer, the wool went to the dyeing room, which sat between the
sorting department and Moore's Creek.[21]Dyeing was a filthy, smelly job that
required considerable strength.Like in the sorting room, only men were hired.Workers placed the wool into large vats, which they stirred
with poles.They then dried the
material in a large steam dryer.In addition to strength, this dirty task required great skill to get
proper, consistent colors.Consequently, dyers received wages of $1.50 or more per day.The foreman of this department was
Charles E. Harlow, most likely a brother of Egbert.[22]

The
only person of color in the entire work force was a dyer, an African American
named Paul Coleman, who lived outside of the mill village on the road leading
to Scottsville.His wife
apparently had died at an early age, leaving him with two daughters.Many southern textile mills restricted
all but the most menial jobs to blacks.Charlottesville deviated slightly from the norm in this instance.Coleman told the census taker in 1910
that he was a "hand," a term that placed him on par with his fellow
workers.Indeed, he received the
same wages as any other dyer with similar experience throughout his long
career.

Once
Coleman and the others of his department had finished their job, the wool was
transported to the main building.Each floor here was arranged so that the machines on each of them could
use power generated by the water wheel at the end of the building.This design had remained unchanged even
though management had switched to external electric power a decade earlier.

On
the third floor, five sets of Furbush carding machines began the process of
turning the wool into yarn.Carders had first to mix the fibers together in the proper amounts and
apply oil to replace the natural grease lost by washing and dyeing.Afterwards, the sharp metal teeth of
the carding machines reduced the wool to long, fluffy ropes called "roving."A worker had to take care not to get
caught in the numerous belts and sharp moving objects that cluttered this
floor.Perhaps it was for this
reason that women were not allowed here either.Carders earned $1.25 or more per day.

One
of the most senior employees in the factory was a carder.Henry Haggard worked at the mill as
early as 1870, when the census taker listed him as being 16 years old.He had followed in the footsteps of his
father Robert Haggard.Henry was
the second of the five generations of Haggards who passed through the factory
doors before they closed.A single
line of Haggards spanned the entire life of the company--almost a century.[23]Despite Henry's family and seniority,
he never became the carding foreman.That job fell instead to Warren S. Graves, who had worked as a carder at
least as early as 1880.[24]

Carding
completed, supervision of production passed from Graves to Thomas H.
Ryalls.Ryalls ran the fourth
floor spinning room.At this
stage, five Furbush "mules" converted the ropelike roving into a
thinner yarn.The machine then
wound the yarn onto bobbins.Three
men handled the machines:Lee
Scruggs, Dillard Brown, and Grover Maddex.Also needed were "doffers," people to remove the
full bobbins from the spinning frame and replace them with empty ones.Generally, young boys were hired to
perform this task because of the low skill and high agility required.No doubt Clarence Desper, Arthur
Drumheller, Roy Brown, Homer Marshall, and their companions functioned in this
capacity.The spinning department
also required young women to operate the twisting machine and to stiffen yarn
for the warp.These workers
probably included the twin sisters Mary and Martha Lang, teenaged daughters of
a local carpenter.Male or female,
the younger workers did not earn much, only 60 to 70 cents per day.

Only
after sorting, carding, and spinning did the wool arrive at Henry Bragg's
domain, the weave room.This
department had the most people, and it took up two floors.On the second level stood twenty-five
Knowles looms.The looms wove yarn
through the warp beams.The newly
created cloth then descended to the first floor where burlers inspected it for
defects, pulled out any loose yarn, and corrected what flaws they could.For this task they used a burling iron.

With
two floors and so much activity, Bragg had to rely heavily on his
assistants.Robert N. Gianniny was
the "second hand" for this department and earned $2.12 per day, the
most of any in his position at the plant.Not only was he an expert in all aspects of manufacturing, but he also
helped Bragg in the everyday administrative tasks that the department
required.On the shop floor, J.
Festus Johnson took part in supervising as a "warper."He helped to lower warp beams into each
loom to start a run of cloth, and he earned $1.85 per day.[25]Johnson's job required not only
considerable strength, but a detailed knowledge of the machinery.Of equal importance was the
"fixer," who moved from loom to loom as needed.J. W. Drumheller and John Krickbaum
both served as fixers, earning $1.75 and $1.85 per day respectively.Krickbaum, interestingly, was one of
the few workers not born in Virginia.His parents had emigrated from Germany to his birthplace of Maryland.[26]

The
majority of the workers in this department were women.Of these, widows and spinsters
comprised the most stable part.Lelia Harlow, the sister of Egbert, had lost her husband before the age
of twenty-seven.She had at least
ten years of experience by 1910 and would stay through the 1920s.So, too, did Emma Adams, who after her
husband's death moved in with her brother-in-law and co-worker, John Shisler.[27]Nellie Druin had married a man
twenty-nine years her senior in 1900.After he died, she lived in a rented house by herself and continued to
work for many years.Older,
unmarried women included relatives of mill supervisors such as Henry Bragg's
sister Janie and Egbert Harlow's younger sister Amanda.Bettie Baltimore was one of only two
women on the floor with husbands.She had married Amanda and Egbert’s brother Marcellus.The other twenty or so weavers were
single women in their late teens and early twenties.They included John Krickbaum's daughter Eva, J. W. Drumheller's
daughter Gladys, and Viola Ladd who boarded with Robert Gianniny.These younger, single women generally
worked for a few years before getting married and leaving.

Women
gravitated to weaving because this job offered the highest potential income
available to females and perhaps because it provided flexible hours.A good weaver could earn $1 to $1.30
per day.Unlike other jobs, which
paid a daily rate, weaving income was calculated by the cloth produced.Top quality fabric earned a certain
rate per yard, seconds somewhat less.Thus, weavers had an incentive to produce as much defect-free material
as possible.[28]While this job gave women an
opportunity to gain high pay, it also left them extremely vulnerable to minor
seasonal fluctuations.[29]Despite this drawback, the weaving room
remained the most desirable place for female workers.

Women
who wanted to weave generally started in the burling room where they earned 60
cents to a dollar per day.Here,
they could improve their skills and perhaps impress their supervisors John
Shisler and Rives Tilman.These
two men, called "perchers," inspected the cloth after the burlers had
repaired it.After working six
months to a year, most women shifted to the looms.

The
only males on the floor other than the supervisors were Jacob Fauslen and
Branch Bibb.Like Henry Bragg and
Henry Haggard, Fauslen had worked in the mill from its early days.For some reason he remained at the
looms among the women.Apparently
this situation, or something, did not agree with his wife.The couple had separated by 1910 and
divorced sometime afterward, a highly unusual occurrence in the mill
community.Branch Bibb was much
younger and earned 65per
day.Most likely he was a sweeper,
an unskilled but necessary position.The sweeper kept the floors clear of debris and gathered loose wool
fibers for recycling.Additionally,
Bibb probably assisted in keeping the looms oiled.

After
being woven and after the women in the burling room had fixed any
imperfections, the cloth continued to the wet finishing room, located on the
first floor.Finishing gave cloth
the body and texture normally associated with wool material.Workers lathered the fabric with soft
soap and ran it through a fulling mill.The machine's combination of rollers and heat made the wool
"felt" or interlock more closely.Like dyeing, this job was dirty and required great
skill.The workers, all men,
received an average of over $1.50 per day.They included Henry Haggard's two sons Lloyd and James,
Jacob Fauslen's son Homer, Louis Shisler, and three members of the Harlow
family, Robert, John, and Marcellus Harlow.

James
E. Timberlake was foreman of the wet finishing department.Born in 1856, he was one of the oldest
workers at the plant.Apparently,
he was also something of an outsider.In 1880, his house was located outside of the mill village close to
Charlottesville.The community
appears to have expanded outward to him by 1910.Nor did Timberlake seem to have as many family connections
as did the majority of those so long established.His wife, Ann, had worked during the 1890's, and his son
Algernon, nicknamed Gerney, worked briefly as a wet finisher after 1910, but
other than that the payroll list no other Timberlakes or Timberlake relatives.[30]As one of the oldest, most experienced
workers in the mill, and given the expertise required for wet finishing,
Timberlake must have been a person of considerable ability.Indeed, the Daily Progress in 1905 called him a "respected citizen."[31]

Compared
to wet finishing, dry finishing was relatively simple.This process consisted first of
specking to remove any vegetable matter clinging to the cloth.Next, workers sheared off loose threads
from the edges and wound the fabric onto rolls.These they wrapped and packed into crates for shipping.This job took little skill although
some strength was no doubt required to move the rolls.J. H. Shepherd supervised this
department with the assistance of Spotswood Johnson, Linwood Carver, and Elwood
Haggard.The latter was the third
son of Henry Haggard to work in the mills.These men earned $1.50 or more per day.Most men and women who worked here,
however, received the lowest wages of any people in the plant.Some took home as little as 50per day.Many of them were boarders with few connections to the
larger mill community.Exceptions
included John Shisler's niece Riva Thomasson and Linwood Carver's two
daughters, Bessie and Carrie.

The
long journey from fleece to finished fabric reached its terminus at the
shipping room.John Hudson ran
this department, but he earned only $2.25 per day.He did not have the same status as the other foremen because
he had no workers to supervise.His job did entail close coordination with the front office.Here, clerk H. D. Jarman and his
assistant, Robert L. Meade, kept all records, balanced accounts, and disbursed
pay.They also made arrangements
for delivery with the salesmen who travelled the country in search of
customers.Unlike many southern
mills, Charlottesville did not utilize the services of a customs house.Once an order was filled, the packaged
bolts of cloth left the mill by horse and wagon for transport to the railroad
or local customers.Salesmen
around the country peddled it on a commission basis.

The
Charlottesville Woolen Mills had specialized in making uniform cloth since the
middle 1880s. Policemen in New
York and Los Angeles wore uniforms made of Charlottesville cloth.So, too, did cadets at Virginia
Military Institute and the United States Military Academy at West Point, as
well as conductors for the Southern Pacific Railway.Although the company did not contract directly with the War
Department, military post exchanges as far away as Vancouver bought woolen
fabric from it.Famous civilian
tailors such as Brooks Brothers also purchased Charlottesville products.Even in death, one could not escape the
ubiquitous cloth:manufacturers in
Burlington and Atlanta used it to line caskets.[32]

Having
a secure market niche allowed for a certain amount of stability because demand
stayed relatively constant, and uniform styles tended to change slowly.In the short run, Marchant could afford
to operate the plant continuously and maintain an inventory without fear that
fickle fashion would render it obsolete.In the long run, sales to uniformed organizations remained high even as
urbanization and indoor work induced a growing number of Americans to switch
from heavy woolens to lighter cotton garments.Consequently, the plant rarely shut down or laid off its
workers during the early twentieth century.

This
situation made the Charlottesville mill different from the more numerous woolen
factories in Philadelphia and New England.There, manufacturers practiced what historian Phillip
Scranton has called "batch production".Operations continued long enough to fulfill orders after
which point employees lost their jobs until a customer placed another
order.Charlottesville also
differed in that the solid cloth required less skill to produce than the
generally more intricate patterns made up North.Here in Charlottesville, management practiced what Scranton
would call "bulk production."[33]Utilizing this technique gave
Charlottesville much in common with the more numerous cotton mills that dotted
the Appalachian Piedmont.Of
course, wool required more highly-skilled processing than did cotton, and the
woven cloth more finishing, but the basics remained similar as did the social
organization of the work force.

*
* * * *

According
to the April 1910 payroll, the Woolen Mills employed approximately 122 people,
72 men and 50 women.One hundred
and eleven of these appear on the 1910 manuscript census, which provides many
demographic details.Of the 111
listed, 47 were married, 58 were single, and 6 were widowed.Married people earned the highest
wages, averaging $1.94 per day as compared to 86 cents for singles.Forty-nine lived with family members, a
figure that includes wives.These
relatives were not always only spouses or children.As noted earlier, mill households consisted of nieces,
nephews, aunts, uncles, and in-laws as well.No children under the age of thirteen were hired.Apparently, the relatively skilled
nature of woolen manufacturing precluded the use of youngsters.The median male age in 1910 was 36, and
the median female age was 20.Ages
for everybody ranged from 13 to 66.

Of
course, statistics do not tell the entire story, nor does simply describing the
duties and family connections within the plant.Workplace organization extended outside the factory walls
into the surrounding community.As
early as 1850, mill management had tried to provide decent housing for its
employees.By 1880, it rented out
three houses and seven tenement dwellings.Henry Marchant lived in one of the houses, and plant manager
John Tyler and his family occupied another.Fifty-five out of 60 workers lived in the remainder.In fact, Henry Bragg's mother had
operated one of the seven tenement dwellings.This arrangement worked so long as the employees were single
boarders or had small families.

The
size and nature of the village changed as people became more established.By 1910, 18 of 111 workers had the
means to purchase their own homes.The company rented to another 30, and only 14 boarded.This arrangement benefited both
management and employees.The
former secured a stable labor force that reproduced itself and passed skills
along generationally.The latter
secured shelter, subsistence, and a sense of place.

The
neighborhood expanded first up the C&O railroad line that followed the
ridgeline to Charlottesville.It
then spread to adjacent high ground.Although noise and smoke from trains must have been bothersome, the
location kept workers safe from the floods that periodically inundated the low
ground beside Moore's Creek and the Rivanna River.It also kept them away from the main sewage pipe that
drained from town, as well as from the run-off from the outhouses and animal
pens that lined the backyards.[34]

This
geographic constriction was in another way fortuitous because it forced the
village to grow in the direction of Charlottesville.By 1890, it had become a part of town rather than an
isolated enclave.[35]Homes of mill employees blended into
those of workers for the C&O Railroad, the Michie Publishing Company, and
the local lumber yards.Oftentimes, people in one house would provide labor for more than one
industry as children chose occupations different from their parents.This circumstance explains in part why
townspeople never came to disparage mill workers as an outcast group of
"lintheads," as happened in other parts of the region.Additionally, local merchants
recognized the importance of the factory payroll to their businesses.[36]Moreover, most of the workers lived
outside the city limit, and they represented no unified political threat.

For
all the connectedness to town, the village retained a distinctive
identity.Turn-of-the-century
newspaper articles refer to the entire neighborhood as the "Woolen
Mills" area.Family ties
reinforced this sense of community to an extent unmatched by other
Charlottesville industries.Unlike
those enterprises, the mill employed people of both genders and a wide span of
ages.Consequently, 76 out of 122
workers had at least one documented connection to another employee.The kinship network within the plant
became even more tangled outside the factory--much too tangled to describe in
words.

Four
decades of shared experience flowed through the blood of mill families.Many of Henry Bragg's co-workers in
1910 spent the late nineteenth century in the community either as employees or
children.They included carder
Henry Haggard and weaver Jacob Fauslen as well as dry finishing foreman John H.
Shepherd, wet finishing foreman James Timberlake, and carding foreman Warren S.
Graves, all of whom were working for the mills by 1880.They also included people who had grown
up in the village, such as shipping foreman James Hudson, son of William
Hudson; weaving second hand Robert Nicholas (Nick) Gianniny, son of John Wesley
Gianniny; sorting foreman Egbert Harlow, dyeing foreman Charles Harlow, and wet
finisher Marcellus Harlow, sons of Hegelia Harlow.Except for a few women such as Henry Bragg's sister Janice,
changes of names through marriage hinders tracing the connection of most of the
female employees with any precision.Nevertheless, one can assume many of the women in 1910 had kinships as
close and memories as long.

One
event in particular stood vividly in the community's shared past:the great fire of 1882.That conflagration destroyed the entire
building with all of the machinery inside.It also claimed the adjacent railroad trestle, which at the
time was made of wood.Production
halted for over eight months.For
a short time, the corporate board debated whether or not to dissolve the
company entirely and divide the insurance money among the stockholders.Workers had to face this uncertain
future while relying on the charity of townspeople for food and basic
necessities.[37]

Marchant
eventually decided to turn the disaster into an opportunity to modernize.He raised $60,000 to more than double
the company capital to $125,000.Forty thousand of this money came from northern investors.Using these funds, he purchased
up-to-date equipment from Philadelphia, including twenty-five looms, five sets
of carding machinery, and five spinning mules.He also made plans to erect a mill building twice as large
as the previous, burned-out one.The unemployed workers supplied the labor for the endeavor.They spent the months of June and July
raising the new structure and by August were once again producing cloth. The hardship of that year remained
seared in the minds of those who experienced it and in those who had heard the
story retold countless times.Perhaps of equal importance was the sense of ownership and pride of
people who had rebuilt their workplace brick by brick.

Laboring
for Henry Marchant after regular hours was nothing new.He had hired workers to perform odd
jobs before the great fire.His
superintendent's journal is replete with references to individual workers.In 1871, for example, he paid Henry
Haggard's father Robert Haggard 25 cents for hauling hay and $10 to John
Hudson's father William Hudson for cutting "lumber for back
room."Marchant also paid for
people to plow and make bricks.Conversely, the mill president provided essential services.He purchased coal and flour in large
quantities, which he then distributed broadly.

The
intimate, symbiotic relationship between management and employee may remind one
of that between master and slave.Indeed, the mill village bears similarity to plantation row housing; and
textile foremen in Charlottesville, and throughout the South, were called
overseers.But neither Henry
Marchant nor his father appeared ever to have owned slaves.Rather, Marchant's regard for workers
seemed grounded in the Protestant work ethic and the spirit of Christian
charity.This form of paternalism
was what labor historians call "personalism," a method whereby
managers retain labor at low cost through arbitrary exchanges of favors.

No
such relationship between employer and employee could have been an equal
one.An old family story of the
Giannini family underscores that inequality.In 1884, Marchant apparently wished his workers to vote for
Grover Cleveland for president.Cleveland supported tariff reforms that Marchant no doubt hoped would
reduce the price of imported wool and dyestuff for his plant.One of Marchant's employees John Wesley
Giannini suffered an accident close to Election Day.Giannini was recuperating from a severed leg when Marchant
sent his carriage to take the injured man to the polls.The trip caused the stump to begin
bleeding again, and Giannini died from loss of blood.[38]

So
long as Marchant provided a secure environment, a sense of place in the world,
and the hope of future progress, his workers remained relatively content.By the end of the century, the labor
force of the company was growing too large for Marchant to handle by
himself.Marchant began during the
1890's to institute broad-based policies normally associated with what labor historians
term "welfare capitalism."[39]He authorized the construction of
additional mill housing and made arrangements for a school with the Albemarle
County Board.He also reportedly
organized a primitive form of health insurance.[40]Marchant remained a highly visible,
personal leader, but he delegated increasing amounts of his power to
foremen.Nowhere was this shift
from personalism to welfare capitalism more apparent than in the Woolen Mills
Sunday School.

*
* * * *

The
Sunday school was formed in 1886 in the wake of an intense Methodist
revival.A year later, with
Marchant's blessings, the workers erected a wooden, Gothic-styled building in
the center of the mill community.Most members of the school belonged to other churches in
Charlottesville. The Sunday school
itself was affiliated with the Union Church, an ecumenical group well-organized
enough to sponsor annual conventions.[41]Weekly attendance in 1910 averaged over
two hundred people.Men and women
attended in roughly even numbers with women slightly outnumbering the men.[42]The school convened promptly at three
o'clock every Sunday afternoon.After an opening prayer and hymn, the congregation divided into twelve
groups, each led by a teacher.The
groups would collect an offering and then study the assigned lessons for 30
minutes.All classes had the same
lesson.Afterwards, the
congregation reassembled to sing more hymns, pray, or discuss church business.Frequently, a Sunday school officer
would comment on the day's teaching.

Henry
Marchant chose to wield power here subtly.Although he served as president of the Albemarle County
Sunday School Association, he never held formal office within the mill
congregation.His wife did teach
one of the twelve classes and served as superintendent of the children's
department.But more
significantly, the Woolen Mills foremen assumed the key leadership roles in the
school.Carding room overseer
Robert Turner Allison was the first superintendent.Sorting room supervisor E. J. Harlow became the second after
Allison died in 1898.Weaving boss
Henry Bragg took a turn at this position in 1903 but soon stepped down in favor
of E.J. Harlow.Bragg continued to
serve as secretary, treasurer, and assistant superintendent.In 1910, dyeing foreman Charles Harlow
was the assistant superintendent.Other mill foremen who served in the Sunday School leadership were
Thomas Ryalls of the spinning department, who was chorister; and John Hudson of
shipping, who was secretary.J. H.
Shepherd of dry finishing often served on various committees, too.Second hands such as Robert Gianniny,
Silas Walton, and Louis Shisler also participated.

Carding
foreman Warren Graves and wet finishing foreman James Timberlake were
conspicuous by the lack of any mention of them in the minutes.A tragedy in 1905 highlights their
apparent lack of participation in the Sunday School.Instead of attending church or Sunday School on the morning
of 28 May, the sons of Graves and Timberlake decided to go fishing in the
Rivanna River.Their boat
capsized, and 17-year-old Archie Timberlake drowned.The congregation ordinarily would have responded with a
eulogy, gift, or other gesture.Young Timberlake received only a penciled notation in the margin of the
Sunday School records:"A.
Timberlake drowned this A.M."[43]

In
any case, their Sunday School leadership allowed the foremen to extend
workplace authority into the life of the community.Marchant himself remained content to lead an occasional
prayer or comment on the lesson.He also helped the school to purchase an organ.[44]At Christmastime, the offering would
always increase substantially to some round figure like twenty or fifty
dollars, an indication of the mill owner's largess.Marchant also participated in writing eulogies, which were
read aloud and recorded verbatim in the minutes.Invariably, the tributes would refer to the deceased as a
"co-worker."[45]

For
those people who for some reason did not get Sunday off from work, Marchant
offered an annual monetary award.What made this gesture unusual is that it duplicated the one already
given by the Sunday school.He
presented this prize "to any member of the school who has been kept away
providentially or for reasons over which there was no control but who would be
otherwise entitled to a prize from the school."[46]The redundancy of this award reveals a
possible ulterior motive:perhaps
Marchant required some people to work on the Sabbath, such as the watchmen who
guarded against fire at the factory on alternate Sundays.

On
one rare occasion, circumstances forced Marchant to intervene directly.The Baptist Sunday School of
Charlottesville had invited the Woolen Mills Sunday School to attend an outing
in Staunton in the month of July 1900.[47]The school declined the offer in an
oddly-worded entry written by dyeing foreman Charles Harlow: “Brother Marchant
and others regret that we are not prepared to attend the Baptist S.S. on their
picnic, but as [the] School is not going as a body, any individual is at
perfect liberty to go and enjoy him or herself, knowing that it will meet the
approval of the School.”[48]Obviously, Marchant did not want his
work force straying so far from home.

Obviously,
Marchant did not want his work force straying so far from home.Sunday afternoon forays across the Blue
Ridge would have made for very blue Mondays.

Although
Marchant clearly used the church to influence workers' actions where they
pertained to the mills, he did not seek to control their thinking.Marchant's own devoutness would not
have allowed for such cynical manipulation.He appeared to have remained true to his beliefs whether
dealing with workers or fellow capitalists.Additionally, the Sunday school lessons followed a
scriptural rather than thematic outline.Moreover, Marchant could not have imposed his beliefs upon the Sunday
school even if he had so desired.The people attended too many other churches for him to have exercised
that level of control.

Nor
did Marchant seek to influence his workers through other means such as
newspapers or legislation.The
debate over the prohibition of alcohol supports this conclusion.Under the provisions of the Mann Act of
1903, the people of Charlottesville voted in June 1907 whether or not to
approve licensing of bars within the town limits.Religious leaders and the Anti-Saloon League mustered
enthusiastic support for the "dry" cause through a series of rallies
and revivals.Given his religious
beliefs and the positive effects this measure would likely have on his work
force, Marchant no doubt heartily approved.He did not publicly intervene.He had recently loaned Daily Progress editor James Lindsay $200.00, and the newspaper gave
a remarkably even-handed account of the debate.Moreover, the church minutes make no mention of the subject.[49]

Marchant
died years before the First World War propagandists and Madison Avenue
advertisers would refine techniques of manipulating opininons and
attitudes.Aside from the raw
economic power he wielded, Marchant instead relied on valued nineteenth-century
traits--force of belief and the depth of character.

Only
as the work force became too unwieldy for him to handle alone did he adopt the
techniques of welfare capitalism.This transition was a gradual one, and he used his foremen to assist
him.The Charlottesville
Chronicle commented in 1892:

class=Section3>

Much
care is taken by the management in the selection of the heads of the different
departments.In the first place
the man must be of the first capacity in his line and in the second he must be
a person of exemplary character.The management recognize the responsibility of his position in being
placed over a large number of employees, many of whom are quite young, and in
the formation of whose characters the head of the department is largely
instrumental, and they make it a necessary qualification for the position that
he be a man of strict sobriety and good morals. . . .The management are very careful in looking up the
antecedents of those who apply for work, and aim to employ only persons of good
character, whether male or female.[50]

class=Section4>

By
1910, the foremen had become well-established leaders both within the factory
and within the community.As noted
earlier, when Marchant died in October 1910, Henry Bragg and John Hudson
composed a two-page tribute to him.[51]They also wrote a letter to the
corporate board, asking that the directors encourage Mrs. Marchant to stay and
continue her work in the Sunday School.They said of the Marchants:"as a result of their labors among us the efficiency of our school
has been greatly enhanced."[52]The corporate board recognized
Marchant, too, in a resolution dated 19 October 1910: “Mr. Marchant was not
only faithful to the business with whose management he was entrusted, but his
hand was ever ready to aid every effort for the welfare of his fellow man; and,
above all, his life was crowned with a firm Christian faith, and his works
showed his complete loyalty to the King whom he delighted to honor. . . ."[53]

*
* * * *

Marchant's
replacement as president was Robert Poore Valentine. Although Valentine would attempt to emulate the personal
style management of his predecessor, changing circumstances would thwart
him.Additionally, Valentine did not
appear to have grasped the necessity for adjusting his management style to meet
the needs of a larger, less personal workplace.Born in 1852, Valentine was the son of Thomas Jefferson
Valentine, who published the Charlottesville Jeffersonian-Republican.Robert
himself worked briefly for the Chronicle from 1877 to 1879 and then moved on to become a successful
entrepreneur.He was instrumental
in starting Charlottesville's first street car line and power company.He also founded the Southern Business College
and ran a successful coal and lumber company in West Virginia.He, his wife, daughter, and two sons
lived in an elegant house in Charlottesville on High Street.Upon assuming the presidency, though,
he moved his family into Marchant's company house.[54]

Valentine's
only experience with the textile industry came as vice-president of the Woolen
Mills.When the board elected
Valentine only to the position of president, Marchant's son Hampton took over
as superintendent and general manager where he oversaw the technical details of
production.The elder Marchant had
held all three positions simultaneously.Valentine's duties included presiding over corporate board meetings,
supervising the front office, obtaining raw materials, and securing purchase
orders.[55]Dividing managerial responsibilities
between two men required a lengthy adjustment period that opened the door for
wounded feelings and trampled egos.Moreover, it set the stage for the 1918 walkout.

Personality
conflicts between Robert Valentine and Hampton Marchant compounded the problem
with organization.Quite possibly,
Marchant resented Valentine's usurpation of his father's role.[56]Valentine, meanwhile, seems to have
viewed Marchant as an obstacle between him and the labor force.Within six months, the company board
intervened.It removed direct
control of the general manager from Valentine.Although this measure may have relieved individual tensions,
it weakened the management structure.As a consequence, the board became much more involved indetails of the plant's operation and in
the activities of individual workers than previously.[57]

Moreover,
the board's action did not solve the problem of divided command.Conflict between Valentine and Marchant
was serious enough to receive mention in the corporate board minutes in 1912:“There have been differences between
these officers on questions more or less important, which, while they have left
no apparent sign of friction, have nevertheless proclaimed the existence of
some degree of disquiet, not to say discontent, which tend to disturb the
mental peace of the parties.[58]

The
board reversed its 1911 decision and again made Marchant subordinate to
Valentine, but it warned the president not to interfere with day-to-day
operations.How the foremen felt
about their new bosses remains unknown with the exception of one detail.In 1916, James Timberlake requested
that the board ratify his ownership of 5 1/3 acres that he had purchased from
Henry Marchant in 1889.[59]That after waiting for over twenty-five
years he would take this step provides evidence of insecurity.

Perhaps
nobody suffered more from the lack of a clear chain of authority than did chief
clerk, H. D. Jarman.He and his
assistant, Robert L. Meade, worked in the front office where they kept track of
incoming raw materials and outgoing cloth.They also maintained the payroll records and disbursed money
biweekly.Jarman had worked in the
office since 1873.Although he did
not live in the village, he had a deep loyalty to the company and considered
himself a part of the mill family.From his desk in the front office, Jarman was torn between the
oftentimes conflicting demands of Marchant and Valentine.Certainly, the knowledge that these two
men were helping to undo something for which he had invested over forty years
of his life angered him.To make
matters harder for Jarman, his assistant died in 1915.[60]

The
struggle for power within the company perhaps explains Valentine's
heavy-handedness in the Sunday School.A devout Presbyterian, Valentine joined the Sunday school soon after
Henry Marchant's death.He
replaced Charles Harlow as assistant superintendent in 1912.His predecessor, by comparison, never
held an office in the school.Valentine continued the tradition of the alternate attendance
prize.In a particularly
ostentatious gesture, he presented superintendent and sorting foreman E. J.
Harlow with a gold fountain pen in 1914.[61]

Clearly,
Valentine recognized the importance of the church as a means of communication
and interaction between management and labor.He sought to extend his influence through intense
personalism, a method that even Henry Marchant had begun to abandon in favor of
welfare capitalism.Some of
Valentine's religious fervor at this time may have stemmed from the death of
his wife in 1912, but he already held office in the Sunday School by that time.

*
* * * *

The
beginning of the First World War in 1914 added to the internal strife.Although the United States remained
neutral for the first three years of the conflict, the war caused considerable
upheaval.Woolen manufacturers
throughout the United States had difficulty acquiring raw wool from Britain and
Australia or dyestuff from Germany.Expenditures for wool at the Charlottesville plant rose from $151,454 in
1914 to $194,054 in 1916 to $406,405 in 1918.Increased government purchases offset the hardship for many
companies.The Charlottesville
Woolen Mills won no such contracts, however.As a result, profits there dropped from $53,478.00 in 1914
to $38,218.95 in 1915.They would
not again reach prewar levels until 1919.[62]

Meanwhile,
daily life became much more difficult for the individual worker and his or her
family.Prices for basic goods in
Charlottesville rose 11 percent between 1913 and 1916.[63]Labor turnover at the mill began to
rise and by 1916 reached 20 percent, the highest level thus far for the
decade.

In
April 1917, the United States declared war.Two months later, on 5 June, 1,038 Charlottesville men
registered for the draft.In July,
the local board drew the first of over two hundred names.The lottery "winners"
included Lloyd Haggard, the son of carder Henry Haggard.That same month, Private Preston
Giannini deployed with the Monticello Guard to Alabama.He had worked as a spinner in
1915.Robert Valentine's son
Vinton would see service overseas.No doubt the draft caused much anxiety, and the presence of armed guards
on the Moore's Creek railroad bridge served as a constant reminder of the war.[64]

The
guards were part of a larger effort to mobilize the local population.The unit from which they came had been
formed to replace the Monticello Guard and to protect strategic local targets
from sabotage.Additionally,
community leaders such as R. T. W. Duke, Jr., and George Michie organized
drives to raise money for Liberty Loans and War Savings Stamps.The University of Virginia became host
to a training facility for over 1,800 military truck drivers and
chauffeurs.The University also
raised two ambulance units and a base hospital.[65]Newspaper articles urged women to
ration food and shop at the newly-established curb market.Sugar and meat became especially dear.[66]

Higher
prices had perhaps the most profound effect on the everyday lives of mill
workers.Although the rate of
inflation rose steeply, average wages remained at $1.67 per day, only 14 cents
more than in 1914.As if to add to
the misery, the main sewage pipe running from Charlottesville to the Rivanna
River broke during the summer.Foul odors wafted across the mill village from the leak.[67]The stench ended only with the arrival
of the coldest winter in twenty years.On 31 December 1917, the temperature dropped to 8 degrees below zero.[68]Clearly, the workers had increasingly
fewer apparent reasons to stay at the mill or even in Charlottesville.Given the booming wartime economy, they
would seem to have had increasing reason to leave.

Although
the turnover rate did not come close to the high levels elsewhere, the trend
continued to rise at the Woolen Mills in 1917 when it reached 21.5
percent.To combat this problem,
the company board authorized in May 1917 a 10per day wage hike for all workers except foremen, who
continued to earn $3.10 per day.In November 1917, the board granted 10 percent increases for
everybody.Significantly, it
classified both of these increases as "war bonuses" rather than
raises.[69]

Even
with the bonus, pay at the Woolen Mills did not compare favorably with wages
elsewhere in Charlottesville.The
only textile plant nearby was the Dery Silk Mills, located on the west side of
town.The Virginia Department of
Labor reported for 1917 that silk mill workers statewide averaged $2.05 per
day, over fifty cents more than at the Woolen Mills.Female workers at the Woolen Mills had little or no
alternatives for employment other than the silk mill, but males could perform
unskilled labor, most notably at the King or Charlottesville Lumber
Companies.Indeed, the census
lists many sons of Woolen Mills families who found jobs at one of those places.Wages for saw mill workers in Virginia
averaged $1.96 per day.The Michie
Publishing Company offered another possibility.Printers and binders in Virginia earned $2.31.The C&O railroad paid well, too.In 1912, the last year that the
Department of Labor listed railroads in its annual report, the C&O paid
$2.28.Many relatives of woolen
mills employees worked at these alternative places, but, for some reason,
relatively few people switched from one to the other during the war.[70]

Opportunities
beckoned outside of Charlottesville as well.The city of Winchester, for example, had a large woolen mill
in 1917.Woolen workers across
Virginia made an average of $2.13 per day, and so chances were that, given its
size, the Winchester company paid higher wages than the Charlottesville mill.[71]An examination of the 1920 manuscript
census for that city reveals no transfers from Charlottesville to
Winchester.Even cotton mill
workers in Virginia earned $1.91.[72]Why, then, did so few people leave
Charlottesville for higher pay?Why did they stay at the Woolen Mills?

First,
the skills required to weave wool differed from those needed to process
silk.Switching to the Dery Mills
was therefore not an easy option.Indeed, census records show only one worker who shifted between the two,
Jerry M. Hall.[73]Second, plant owners in Charlottesville
knew each other and may have joined forces to discourage people from changing
jobs.Michie Publishing owner
George Michie had close ties to the Woolen Mills.He allowed the corporate board to meet in his bank office,
and he eventually became a director of the company himself.He, for one, would not have wanted to
enter into a bidding war over the local labor supply.Third, most manufacturing jobs such as saw mills and
railroads were not open to women.The Woolen Mills therefore offered a higher family wage because more
people within a household could work.

Nor
did higher wages at other woolen mills constitute a significant incentive to
leave Charlottesville.Virginia's
woolen industry was so tiny that the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not keep
records on the state until 1930.[74]In 1909, there were sixteen woolen
mills in Virginia employing 542 people, 371 of whom, or 65 percent, worked
either in the Charlottesville Woolen Mills, the Virginia Woolen Company of
Winchester, or the Crawford Woolen Company of Martinsburg.The latter two were located in the
upper Shenandoah Valley.[75]Had they desired to move,
Charlottesville workers could easily have taken the train to either one, but
none did.

Given
the choices, then, most workers stayed where they had family and friends.Kinship connections and a shared past
created intangible bonds that transcended mere economic choice.In the absence of coherent management
or a strong individual patriarch like Henry Marchant, the foremen provided the
ligaments for this community.They
fostered a remarkable consistency in the workplace as well as leadership in
spiritual life at the Sunday school.Additionally, rent for housing in the mill village remained stable
throughout the war period.[76]

*
* * * *

Even
bonuses and cheap rent could not offset the turmoil that came with the bitterly
cold winter of 1917-18 during which the plant was shut down one day a week and
Robert Valentine submitted his resignation as president of the company.The partial shutdown occurred because
military and related demands for coal and oil was causing shortages and drove
up fuel prices drastically.[77]Congress in August 1917 passed the
Lever Food and Fuel Control Act, creating a Fuel Administration to regulate
prices, production rates, and distribution.In Virginia, aspiring politician Harry F. Byrd took the
first step in his long career by becoming the state Fuel Administrator.[78]On 16 January 1918, local Fuel
Administration chairman George Walker announced a five day holiday.Thereafter for the next ten weeks, all
Mondays would be legal holidays, meaning that the Woolen Mills would be closed
those days.Violations could bring
a $5,000 fine or a year in prison.[79]

Simultaneously,
Valentine's difficulties reached a climax.He became so ill in March that he required
hospitalization.A month later,
his daughter died.[80]That his son Vinton would soon go to
war in Europe no doubt unsettled him further.Shortly thereafter, he became embroiled in a dispute with
chief clerk H. D. Jarman, who protested directly to the board in a bitter
letter dated 18 June."Under
Mr. Valentine's negative disposition Hampton [Marchant] is very much inclined
to seek every opportunity and excuse to excuse himself from the Mill,"
Jarman wrote.He also complained
that Valentine spent too much time loitering in the front office waiting for
the mail, distracting the assistant bookkeeper, who Jarman was training to
replace the late Robert Meade.Jarman warned that business would suffer if the board allowed the
situation to continue.[81]

Valentine
responded in a letter dated 16 July."The charge that I was insulting to Mr. Jarman was explained to the
board some time ago," he said."If the unwarranted charges were at alltrue they could have all been adjusted long ago with most
any one else except a man of Mr. Jarman's unfortunate disposition."[82]

Valentine,
Marchant, and Jarman were summoned to a meeting in August to settle the
dispute.The board concluded that
"there is no question of the fact that there has been for some time, if
not from the very inception of the present management, serious friction between
the President, the head bookkeeper, and between the Superintendent and head
bookkeeper."It added that
"relations between the President and Superintendent have never been
entirely cordial, and whilst friction between them has not been as great as at
one time, they are not working as harmoniously as should be."The board left management intact, but
warned Valentine to work through the department heads and not to deal directly
with individual workers.[83]

The
peace, if that is what it was, lasted only three months.Valentine submitted his resignation on
1 November 1917, to become effective in January 1918, when he would vacate the
company house.The board
immediately began searching for a replacement.Hampton Marchant remained superintendent, but the board
hired a separate general manager in the person of Durgen Van Wagonen.[84]In January 1918, the board decided to
reelect Valentine president in January 1918, but not before stripping the
office of all power.Although he
served only a year in this capacity, he remained on the board until his death
in 1928.He also stayed in the
Woolen Mills Sunday School and led the morning prayer two days before the
walkout.[85]The board had finally taken decisive
action to make management more efficient after seven years of disorder.Still, according to the annual report,
"It was with fear and trembling that the Board entered the New Year 1918,
with the new management, and everything in the country more or less unsettled
by reason of the war."[86]

Like
his predecessor, Van Wagonen was not a professional textile executive.The scope of his business perspective,
however, reached far more broadly than had Valentine's.Van Wagonen was born in Pascagoula,
Mississippi, on 27 July 1871.His
family moved the next year to Savannah, Georgia, where he grew up and attended
the public schools.As a young
adult, he was employed by the Central of Georgia Railroad and its subsidiary,
the Ocean Steamship Company.He
married Mary Rahn of Savannah and fathered two daughters and one son.In 1908, he moved to New York City to
work for the Brunswick Steamship Company where he stayed until the
Charlottesville Woolen Mills Board recruited him in late 1917.[87]

Van
Wagonen's experience working with railroads and steamships made him aware of
the interconnectedness of industry on a national scale.Within Charlottesville itself, he
attempted foster cooperation among businesses by helping to found a local
Rotary Club and serving as its second president in 1922.This broad, forward-thinking
perspective he combined with a forceful personality and a willingness to take
risks.He would later demonstrate
these characteristics in abundance by his forceful handling of the finishers
who walked out, his skillful expansion of the mill during a period of later
economic recession, and his stormy relationship with Board Chairman George
Michie that ended with Van Wagonen's resignation in 1936.[88]

Although
the new president belonged to the Presbyterian church, he did not share his
predecessor's more nineteenth- century sense of Christian paternalism.His beliefs were closer to those
espoused by writers such as Bruce Barton, whose popular 1926 book The Man
Nobody Knows portrays Jesus as having the
characteristics of a good advertiser and businessman.[89]Van Wagonen moved into the president's
house at the Woolen Mills that Valentine had vacated, but he did not join the
Sunday School.Consequently,
although he would bring through his efforts great prosperity to the mill, he
would never loom nearly as large in the social memories of mill families as did
Henry Marchant.

Van
Wagonen began work on 1 January 1918.The board granted him a salary of $200.00 a month, $50 more than
Valentine had received.This vote
of confidence, made at a time when the company had just borrowed money in order
to pay dividends to stockholders, would put Van Wagonen in a difficult position
only a month later when confronted with a demand for compensation for the lost
days.[90]How could he plead poverty?Having a German-sounding name during
this time probably did not improve his standing with his employees either.

*
* * * *

On
the morning 5 February 1918, eighteen workers decided to test their new manager
and demand payment for the days lost during the Fuel Administration's shutdown
the previous week.Van Wagonen
refused their demands. When they threatened a work stoppage, he fired them.Later that same afternoon, he
advertised for replacements on the front page of the afternoon newspaper.

The
eighteen workers who walked out consisted of twelve men from the wet finishing
department and six women from the burling department.[91]More than likely, the male finishers
made the initial request for compensation during the morning, and the females
left later.The payroll supports
this hypothesis because the men received half a day's pay for the 5th whereas
the women received three quarters.The male finishers who walked out were Robert O. Harlow, Benjamin F.
Hall, Arthur W. Holloway, Edward F. Blair, Alonzo (Art) Spencer, Frank M.
Thomas, J. F. Johnson, Keller M. Pace, Earnest L. Bibb, John E. Shisler, E. D.
(Donnie) Shisler, and Louis Shisler.Five finishers remained on the job; they were James Haggard, James
Spencer, James Smith, Linwood J. Carver, and John Smith.[92]

In
terms of a composite of their individual characteristics, virtually nothing
distinguishes the group who walked out from the finishers who stayed or from
the rest of the factory.They were
no more or less connected to other mill workers by kinship or community ties
than anybody else.They
represented a mixture of old and young, married and bachelor, parents and
childless, homeowner and renter, experienced and non-experienced, high-paid and
low-paid.Their only
distinguishing feature as a group is that the finishers who left marked the
extremes of the individual traits of the workforce.They included the oldest and the youngest, the most
experienced and the least experienced, as well as the highest paid and the
lowest paid of the workers.The
characteristics of the ones who stayed, meanwhile, were close to the norm.

The
female burlers who walked out are clearly recognizable as a group.They are, however, more difficult to
identify with certainty because women in this department tended to work more
irregularly than men.More than
six female employees, the number known to have walked out, are listed on the
payroll as having missed days during the walkout.Nevertheless, the women who actively protested were most
likely Ada Gay, Ruth Harlow, Edith Thomasson, Edna Gianniny, Lula Marshall, and
Lutie Payne.All of them had at
least two years of experience as burler, yet none had advanced to working as
weavers.None had a husband or
children, and all lived with family members who provided them with housing

The
women probably learned that Van Wagonen had fired the finishers early in the
afternoon.Ada Gay must have
become particularly angry over this news because her son-in-law, Earnest Bibb,
was among the twelve.Gay had been
living with Bibb and her daughter Ethel since her husband Andrew died.She was one of the most experienced
women in the burling department, having worked there for at least eighteen
years.It may well have been she
who persuaded the other five burlers to follow her out of the factory.

Leadership
in the wet finishing room, or the lack of it, helps to explain why most of the
workers in that department walked out while no others did.James Timberlake, the foreman of wet
finishing, was less connected to the mill community than the other
foremen.He was, for instance, one
of only two of eight foremen to have taken no active part in the Sunday
school.The workers in other
departments would have looked to their foremen for stability and guidance
during the hard times of World War I while the wet finishers did not have the
same ties to theirs.

Most
likely, Timberlake's assistant or "second hand," Louis Shisler, had
become the real leader of the wet finishers.Shisler participated actively in the Sunday school and was
married to Kate Gay, who possibly was Ada Gay's sister.Shisler's tuberculosis would soon
render him unable to work and drive him to suicide three months later.[93]Shisler may have decided that he had
very little to lose by walking out, and the others simply followed.Unlike foremen in other departments,
Timberlake lacked the moral authority to stop them.

Van
Wagonen had little choice but to fire the workers.He had to demonstrate his authority and prove his mettle to
the board.Fearful that the rest
of the plant might strike, the board called an emergency meeting on 7
February.The directors
specifically requested Van Wagonen's presence.At the meeting, they granted him the power to raise wages as
he saw fit so long as the total did not exceed $500.While signalling their support for Van Wagonen, the board
was also saying to him that he should not fire the finishers if possible.[94]

All
of the workers who had walked out on 5 February returned on the seventh.Van Wagonen had already removed the
advertisement in the Daily Progress
before the board's meeting, but he did not inform the Progress that the strike had ended until the next week.[95]Nor did Van Wagonen raise wages
immediately.He waited until March
before giving the workers a raise.He first reduced the base wage for everybody except the foremen then
granted a 25 percent production bonus.This meant that biweekly pay went up and would stay up so long as
production continued.In July, the
percentage rose to 30 percent, and in August it climbed again to 45
percent.The bonus system stopped
at the war's end 11 November 1918.Van Wagonen replaced it in 1920 with a 5 percent annual production bonus
and an adjustment of the base wage rate.By this time, the average daily rate had increased from $1.63 when Van
Wagonen took over to $3.25.This
raise brought wages in line with the inflation rate and kept them competitive
with other industries in Charlottesville.

The
comprehensive bonus system represented another shift from the personalism of
Henry Marchant to the welfare capitalism of Durgen Van Wagonen.So, too, was the extension of mill
housing in 1920.[96]Likewise, workers came to treat
management with greater formality.In 1922 and 1923 they submitted formal petitions for raises and
vacations.[97]The workers had good reason to distance
themselves from Van Wagonen.In
1922, he had gone to Richmond to lobby against a proposed labor bill, which was
defeated in committee.[98]

Some
vestiges of the old system lingered, however, because the board apparently
continued to exert influence through the Sunday school.The week after the walkout, publishing
company owner George Michie addressed the assembled congregation.Michie, of course, had a vested
interest in a stable labor force both because of his own plant and his close
connections to the Woolen Mills board.Michie would eventually join and become its chairman.The Sunday school minutes said that he
discussed war bonds, but his visit stands out nevertheless because of its
timing and uniqueness.[99]

Immediately
after the walkout, Robert Valentine stopped attending services there, and
Hampton Marchant suddenly became a teacher even though he had never before been
mentioned in the school records.[100]The change may have had its origins
with the corporate board, which had exerted some control over the Sunday school
membership in the past.In 1910,
for example, workers had petitioned the board to allow Mrs. Henry Marchant to
remain a teacher after her husband's death.

On
24 February 1918, the officers and teachers of the Sunday School met to
determine whether Valentine should be dropped from the rolls.Never before and never afterwards did
the leadership meet in order to terminate a membership.E. J. Harlow, Hampton Marchant, and
Robert Gianniny were appointed to write a resolution.Dated 30 March 1918, the letter to Valentine thanked him for
his service and then said:

class=Section5>

Having
sensed to a full degree the importance of this work upon whom the moral and
social atmosphere of this community, and therefore directly resulting benefit
to the business in which we all have such a vital interest, you have thrown
yourself earnestly and sympathetically into the school work and every other
good work undertaken in our locality.[101]

class=Section6>

Valentine
responded on 14 April 1918."The years spent with all of you have been helpful and will be long
remembered," he wrote."I have been with you in days of joy and days of sorrow and it is
my hope that you and I have been made stronger in Christian love, faith, and
service.It will be a real
pleasure [to] visit you when I can.I think of you often on Sunday evenings."[102]

Van
Wagonen did not choose to emulate his predecessors in regard to the Sunday
school.His daughter became a
teacher, but he himself did not join.[103]He certainly recognized the importance
of the foremen, however.He
granted them generous raises and benefits.The base wage for a foreman had remained at $3.10 per day
from as early as 1909 until 1919.Van Wagonen raised it to $4.96 in January 1919 to $5.05 in October 1919
to $5.96 in 1920, and to $7 in 1923.Foremen's pay stayed at this level until the Great Depression forced a
reduction in 1931.The general
manager also granted a week's vacation to all department heads starting in
1919.[104]

Pay
raises comprised only a small part of the changes that Van Wagonen
wrought.Prior to 1918, the
shipping department used a horse and wagon to move goods to and from the
railroad depot.Van Wagonen
ordered it replaced with a truck within a few months of his arrival.[105]He began tracking sales separately, and
he kept more accurate records of what each loom produced.[106]Additionally, he paid special attention
to small details such as typing the annual report rather than scribbling it by
hand.In recognition for his
performance, the board elected him president in 1920.[107]

That
same year, Van Wagonen embarked on a major expansion of the factory.Ironically, the organizational
ineptitude that failed to acquire military contracts proved to one benefit in that
the company suffered little from the postwar economic slump.While textile manufacturers elsewhere
went bankrupt, Van Wagonen increased the number of looms from 25 to 37 and the
number of workers to 140 in 1921 to a peak of 172 in 1929.Production rose from 4,582 yards per
two-week period to 12,647 on the eve of the Great Depression.Profits climbed during the same period
from $60,690 to $131,127.

Although
pay increased, life for the workers in the 1920s remained in many ways much the
same as it was in 1910 when Henry Marchant died. Of course, the people had
begun to enjoy modern conveniences such as automobiles, radios, electricity,
and running water.But they
partook of them within the village community.Proportions of homeowners to renters to boarders changed as
little as did the median and average ages.Sixty three percent of the 1920 labor force had at least one
other relative who worked in the factory as opposed to 68 percent in 1910.Average wages stayed at around $3.50 a
day throughout the decade, and turnover actually declined after 1921.Most of the foremen kept a steady hold
on their department and the community until they retired.[108]

James
Timberlake was one exception.He
remained in his position as wet finisher foreman after the walkout ended, but
Van Wagonen clearly had lost faith in him.In 1922, he hired P. L. Greene, an expert finisher from the
North, to examine efficiency.[109]The next year, when Van Wagonen raised
the base pay rate for foremen to $7, Timberlake was the only one whose pay was
kept at $5.96.He retired in 1926
on a pension of $60 per month.Earnest L. Bibb, one of the men who walked out in 1918, replaced him.[110]

Henry
Bragg, on the other hand, continued a remarkable climb upward in the mill
hierarchy.In 1919, Van Wagonen
removed him from the weaving room and put him in charge of the company store.[111]Robert N. Gianniny replaced him as
foreman.Bragg became
superintendent in 1924 after Hampton Marchant resigned and remained in that
position until he retired in 1937.Unfortunately for him, he only received a $30.00 per month pension
because of the Great Depression.[112]

*
* * * *

The
Charlottesville Woolen mills witnessed an evolution from personalism to welfare
capitalism through the management of Henry Marchant, Robert Poore Valentine,
and Durgen Van Wagonen.Given that
neither Marchant nor his father were slaveholding planters, and given the
devoutness of Marchant's beliefs, this personalism arose from the work ethic and
patriarchy of Protestant Christianity rather than from a need to control
chattel.Welfare capitalism arose
from within and from necessity as the mill modernized and expanded.

This
change evolved slowly, yet unevenly.Although Henry Marchant started with a strictly personalist management
style, he had become more of a welfare capitalist by the time of his
death.His use of the Woolen Mills
Sunday School as a means of controlling workers represented a cross between the
two methods.Robert Valentine
tried to take a step backwards, and he learned to his chagrin that one person
could not control everything within a large company.Durgen Van Wagonen cast aside almost all of the old ways,
but even here, the corporate board continued to intervene in individual cases.

Foremen
provided a crucial bridge in this evolution.In the absence of coherent management at the top, they held
the work force together during a period of high labor turnover.Moreover, they helped to prevent a
larger strike in February 1918.The influence that they wielded within the Sunday school buttressed
their workplace authority.By
contrast, foremen such as Warren Graves and James Timberlake lost power by not
participating.Moreover, in the
case of the latter, that lack combined with unusual external circumstances and
unstable personalities such as Louis Shisler to set the stage for the 1918
walkout.

The
role of the foreman in modernization at the Charlottesville Woolen Mills stands
in contrast to the part they played elsewhere in the United States.In Nelson Lichtenstein's study of the
automobile industry, for example, foremen steadily lost power as management and
organized labor squeezed away their authority.In Sanford Jacoby's more general study of industry during
the First World War Period, foremen fought a losing battle against a growing
cadre of professionalized personnel managers.In Charlottesville, the foremen served as a stabilizing
influence instead.This example
suggests the unevenness of change.Modernization occurred in fits and starts at different levels rather
than in a single broad sweep.Management, line supervisors, and employees adjusted on their own terms
to larger trends, local contingencies, and each other.[113]

Additionally,
the gradual shift from personalism to welfare capitalism within the framework
of Protestant Christianity suggests a certain continuity with the southern
past.This conclusion tends to
support Allen Tullos's finding that patriarchy and the work ethic combined to
thwart labor organization in the South.Indeed, the Charlottesville Woolen Mills did not unionize until two
years after the death of Robert Gianniny, the last foreman and Sunday school
leader of the World War I period.As if to emphasize this break with the past, the first union president
was Henry Bragg's son.Its first
treasurer was Otis Haggard, Sr., the son of James Haggard and grandson of Henry
Haggard.By this time, too, the
company was shifting over from woolens to synthetic fabrics.[114]

Whereas
Charlottesville supports Tullos, it contradicts the conclusions of Douglas
Flamming.Flamming rejects the
agency of religion and argues for a chronological distinction between
personalism and welfare capitalism.Perhaps the turmoil within the cotton industry can explain this
difference.As economist William
Phillips has proven, much of the mobility among cotton mill employees occurred
among higher-skilled hands and foremen.These workers had considerable choices throughout the southeastern
Piedmont.[115]Woolen foremen, on the other hand, had
fewer options.Their relative stability
permits the effects of their leadership, as well as their role in the
community's religious life, to stand out more clearly.

The
Woolen Mills Chapel symbolizes the enduring, yet evolving nature of southern
culture even into the 1990s.The
green and white meeting-place has been carefully restored as have many of the
old houses throughout the neighborhood.Nearby, only a 1929 addition to the factory and a few subsidiary
buildings still stand.The
original 1882 structure was demolished to make a parking lot soon after the
company closed in 1962.All that
remains of it are the brick window frames of the first floor, a half-silted-in
dye room, and fragments of the wet finishing building and sluice gate.Like these physical remnants, only
fragments of the workers' lives survive in contemporary documents and family
legends.When woven together, they
reveal not just the dark times of which John Steinbeck evokes, but the rich
fabric of everyday life.

[1].
A version of this article, with the author’s name misspelled, was published in The
Magazine of Albemarle County History,
Volume 53 (1995), 70-113.Printed
or electronic copies of this article may be made for personal or educational
use on the condition that the author receive attribution and that his name be
spelled correctly.Reproduction
for all other purposes requires permission from the author (amyers@uscupstate.edu or andrew.h.myers@us.army.mil).

[2].According
to Michael Giannini of Charlottesville, whose grandfather and great-grandfather
were workers, the mill used a steam whistle to mark the beginning and end of
the work day.The bell was
reserved to warn of floods.Giannini says that the whistle was salvaged from the plant by a relative
when it closed and that he has seen it himself.Dozens of Giannini's family worked for the mill.

[3].The
Daily Progress, 5 Feb. 1918, contains
the advertisement.The paper
printed the story of the walkout the next day.The number of workers comes from the payroll, which are part
of the company records located at the Merrimac Valley Textile Museum in North
Andover, Massachusetts.The
museum, hereafter listed as MVTM, is scheduled to reopen in 1996 in Lowell,
Massachusetts.

[5].Turnover
at the Woolen Mills for this study was calculated using the formula agreed upon
at the Rochester Conference of Employment Managers in May, 1918.The Department of Labor also used this
formula at that time.See
Brissenden and Frankel, Labor Turnover,
pp. 7-28.

[6].
Average wages calculated from the sample of payrolls taken from the first April
of each month from 1909 to 1929.This figure does not include the weavers, who were paid varying rates
according to yards of cloth produced.Omitting weavers should not skew the average because, based on two week
totals, they earned somewhere near the factory mean.In fact, not including the weavers may even provide a
clearer view of the prevailing price of labor because wages in this department
tended to vary considerably on account of part-time workers.The April sample is sufficient for
computing the average because production at the Charlottesville Woolen Mills
exhibited little seasonal variation.

[7].
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Retail Prices, 1913 to
December 1919 (Washington, 1921),
370-371.The prices for this
calculation come from Richmond, Virginia, approximately seventy miles from
Charlottesville.The Bureau used
Richmond as a regional sample.This figure correlates with the rate of 48% for goods listed in the
Charlottesville Daily Progress in an article dated 7 Jan. 1918.In fact, the Progress
cited the Bureau specifically for the article.

[9].Flamming
builds upon Cathy L. McHugh, Mill Family:The Labor System in the Southern Cotton Textile Industry, 1880-1915
(New York, 1988) and Philip Scranton,
"Varieties of Paternalism:Industrial Structures and the Social Relations of Production in American
Textiles," American Quarterly (Summer,
1984), 235-57.See also Sanford M.
Jacoby, Masters to Managers:Historical and Comparative Perspectives in American Employers (New York, 1991).

[10].Minutes
of the Woolen Mills Sunday School exist from 1897 until the mid 1950's.Written in company ledger books, the
volumes are in the possession of the Woolen Mills Chapel Trustees.Subsequent references cited as WMSS
Records.The minutes of the board
of the Woolen Mills Company from 1870 through 1956, in four volumes, are in
MVTM.Microfilm of the first three
volumes, 1870-1937, are located in Alderman Special Collections, University of
Virginia.Subsequent references to
corporate board minutes cited as CBM, MVTM.

[12].Unless
otherwise noted, biographical information comes from cross-referencing
information from manuscript census records for 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900,
1910, and 1920 with payroll documents and selected entries from the
superintendent's journal (located at MVTM).A fire destroyed the manuscript census for 1890.See also Harry Poindexter, "A
History of the Charlottesville Woolen Mills," (M.A. thesis, University of
Virginia, 1955), and "Henry Clay Marchant and the Foundations of the
Charlottesville Woolen Mills, 1865-1882," Magazine of Albemarle County
History, 10 (1953), 26-48.

[13].Payrolls
before July 1909 are not available, but prior to that date, Marchant frequently
listed the names of workers in the superintendent's journal.For a reference to Lucy Bragg, see
Superintendent's Journal, 23 Dec. 1880, MVTM.

[19].Insurance
Maps of Charlottesville, Virginia (New
York, 1920).This volume contains
a detailed drawing of the Woolen Mills with a listing of operations on
individual floors.The Albemarle
County Historical Society owns a copy of this atlas.

[20].United
States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Wages and Hours of
Labor in Woolen and Worsted Goods Manufacturing, 1916 (Washington, 1918).Pages 84 to 154 give a detailed description of the woolen
manufacturing process.Average
wages come from an analysis of the payrolls.

[21].Wool
can be dyed in its raw form, as spun yarn, or as completed cloth.In Charlottesville, however, dyeing
took place first.

[22].Hegelia
and Martha Harlow, natives of Fluvanna County, had seven children.At the time of the 1900 Census, five of
them still lived with their parents:Egbert, Lelia, Marcellus, Amanda, and Richard.Charles would have fit within the range of their
births.So, however, would fellow
workers James H. and Robert O. Harlow.If all of these people were siblings, they would total eight, which
contradicts the census figure of seven.Thus, the relationship between Charles and Egbert is speculative in the
absence of additional evidence.

[24].Graves's
name does not appear in the 1880 Census, but he is listed as having received
payment for work during October and November 1880 (Superintendent's Journal, 23
Dec. 1880, MVTM).

[25].The
term "warper" is somewhat ambiguous.The Bureau of Labor Statistics describes the job as highly
skilled.The Virginia Annual
Report of Labor Statistics lists "warper" as a relatively low-paying
occupation.Given that Johnson
described himself as a warper to the census taker and that he received
relatively high wages, the Labor Department definition most likely applies
here.

[26].At
the turn of the century, Marchant had imported at least one worker from
England, John Arundale.He had
attended the Bradford Textile School in Yorkshire.According to notes of an interview with his daughter,
Arundale designed the broadcloths that the mill sold to the United States
Military Academy at West Point.He
returned to England in 1901 because of financial difficulties.Dorothy Arundale Gianniny Burrows,
interview, Feb. 1981, Albemarle County Historical Society.WMSS Records, 2 Jun. 1901.The Riverview Cemetery in
Charlottesville contains a few graves of other workers who had immigrated, but
these people were exceptional.

[28].The
estimate for a weaver's daily pay was calculated by taking the two week total
and dividing by twelve.How much a
weaver earned per yard varied from person to person and is impossible to figure
prior to 1919 because production records prior to that time were either not
kept or lost.Additionally, total
pay for weavers varied much more drastically than did wages in other parts of
the factory.Many of the women
appear to have worked part time.

[29].Although
the payrolls indicate that mass layoffs did not occur until the Great
Depression, post-1919 production records show that output varied considerable
from week to week.The difference
in pay could vary by as much as a month's rent.

[30].According
to the 1880 Census, a seventeen-year-old weaver named Emma Timberlake boarded
with the widowed mother of Jacob Fauslen.The relationship to James is unknown, and she disappears from the
record.The Fauslens lived next to
James and Ann Timberlake.Interestingly, both James Timberlake and Jacob Fauslen seem to have been
outsiders in the mill community.

[34].Michael
Giannini has in his possession a photograph of the Woolen Mills that includes
the surrounding village.It was
taken prior to 1929 because the additions to the mill built during that year do
not appear in the photograph.CBM
for 1917 contain repeated references to a broken sewer pipe.Apparently, city leaders in
Charlottesville took their time in repairing the break.

[35]."In
a way, Charlottesville, is peculiarly situated.There are few cities of its size that can equal it in
longitude and this peculiarity bids fair to be heightened rather than otherwise
in the future.With the University
at its western extremity it is probable that the whole growth of the city would
be in that direction if no counteracting influences were brought to bear.As it is, however, the eastern
extremity of the city and the Woolen Mills are fast becoming nearer together,
the growth in this direction being nearly as rapid as in the west."Charlottesville Chronicle, 3 June 1892.

[36].The
Charlottesville Chronicle, 3 June 1892,
reported that the mill payroll contributed $45,000 annually to the local
economy.

[54].Biographical
information comes from an unpublished sketch on file at the Albemarle County
Historical Society written by Robert's granddaughter Virginia Valentine Walker
Meade.Other sources include an
interview with Robert's daughter-in-law Irene Valentine printed in the Daily
Progress, 29 April 1990; an obituary for
his son Vinton in ibid.,
24 May 1968; and an obituary for his son Robert, Jr., in ibid., 19 May 1960.Robert Valentine's personal papers are filed in Alderman
Library Special Collections, University of Virginia.

[56].Harry
Poindexter interviewed Hampton Marchant for his 1955 masters thesis.He writes in a footnote on page 140
that "Marchant informed the writer that no friction ever existed between
him and Valentine.But the
directors thought differently."Poindexter conducted this interview thirty years after the fact.His placement of the information in a
footnote suggests that he, too, had doubts about the lack of friction.Furthermore, that Marchant would also
tell Poindexter that no labor disputes had ever occurred speaks poorly for his
memory.

[60].Jarman's
devotion to the plant comes through in his 1932 retirement letter:"At that time [1873] the plant was
small--known as a one set mill.Its capital stock was less than $50,000--paid in.Its output mostly plain cassimeres and
kerseys.Notwithstanding many
drawbacks in those days such as frequent high water, occasional serious floods,
and a disastrous fire in 1882--causing an impairment of assets during the
rehabilitating period--I have witnessed its growth to its present physical
proportions--prestige, and financial integrity.I value the memory of many years of pleasant association
with the officers and colaborers who have gone before, and those who
remain--wish for them continued success and happiness that comes to a congenial
group of workers in a worthy enterprise" (Correspondence Box, MVTM).

[73].The
1910 payroll lists J. M. Hall as a worker in the wet finishing department.He earned $1.65 per day.The 1910 census lists him as a finisher
at the woolen mills who was widowed and had two daughters.The WMSS Records for 8 July 1906 note
the death of Emma Hall.By 1920, Hall
had remarried and is listed as a binder in the silk mills.

[74].United
States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Wages and Hours of
Labor in woolen and Worsted Goods Manufacturing:1910 to 1930 (Washington,
1931), 1.

[75].Department
of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, United States Census of Manufactures, 9: 1277.10: 100.See also Wilbur S.
Johnston, Weaving a Common Thread:A History of the Woolen Industry in the Top of the
Shenandoah Valley (Winchester, 1990),
46-86.

[87].
Information comes from a biographical sketch written in 1956 for the
Charlottesville Rotary Club.A
copy, "furnished by Mr. DuBord of the Electric and Power Company", is
on file at the MVTM in the correspondence box.

[91].The
Daily Progress said that all eighteen
workers belonged to the finishing department.Although burlers came under the supervision of the weaving
foreman, burling is technically part of the finishing process.

[92].The
finishers who walked out did not receive pay for that day or the next.The number of blank spaces on the
finisher payroll correlates with the number of men given by the Daily
Progress.

[93].Shisler
killed himself with a shotgun blast to the head in May 1918.The Sunday School cancelled services so
that everybody could attend his funeral.(Daily Progress, 17 May 1918;
WMSS Records, 2nd Quarter Summary).

[96].Van
Wagonen could afford to be more generous with wages and benefits than had his
predecessor because profits rose under his leadership.Additionally, the stockholders voted in
February 1920 to increase the capital stock so that the plant could expand.

[99].WMSS
Records, 17 Feb. 1918.R. T. W. Duke
says in his account that churches throughout Charlottesville allowed laymen to
make pitches for War Savings Stamps and bonds from their pulpits.Michie's appearance nevertheless was a
highly unusual event at the Woolen Mills Sunday school.Given the high level of personal
involvement that Michie later exhibited in the business and company affairs
within the mill community, it is reasonable to conclude that he could have had
a motivations for addressing the congregation that went beyond selling war bonds.

[113].Nelson
Lichtenstein and Stephen Meyer, eds., On the Line:Essays in the History of Auto Work (Chicago, 1989;Sanford Jacoby, Employing Bureaucracy:Managers, Unionization, and the
Bureaucratization of Work, 1900-1945 (New
York, 1985).

[114].According
to Mabell C. Haggard, the employees staged a walkout during the forties after
the manager refused to grant a pay raise.At the same time, 168 of 200 total workers formed Local Union #86 of the
United Textile Workers of America (AFL).The employees returned to work the next day, and with federal assistance,
they negotiated a contract.U.S.
Department of Labor Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, Record Group
280, National Archives; UTWA Biennial Convention Meetings, 1944 and 1946; Daily
Progress, 12 March 1945; personal interview
with Mabell C. Haggard by Andrew Myers, December 1992; copy of union contract
in correspondence box, MVTM.